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Mathletes had fun this week with their coordinate pictures.  We introduced all four quadrants in the coordinate plane.

Pi day is upon us again as Monday was March 14.  It is called Pi day because the number Pi starts with 3.14. We challenged the Mathletes to think of what 2Pi day would be; calculating 6.28, they say, "June 28." Then 3Pi day is fun; 9.42 gets them thinking about 30 days in September, so some of them go into October 12th.  A silly past-time but fun.

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Which natural numbers can be written as the sum of two or more positive consecutive integers?  This exercise has challenged mathematicians for centuries and clear patterns have formed.  However, only recently, in 1997, did was a proof developed for why powers of two such as 1,2,4,8,16,32...... could never be a sum of consecutive integers.

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PAPER TOWER CONTEST  

We continued our exploration of relative size and scale by looking at the tallest buildings in the world.  The children studied my models of the former Twin Towers which have a scale of 1:373.  The actual buildings were once a quarter of a mile high.  

Before, the Twin Towers, the Empire State Building was the tallest for 40 years from 1930. Last year, the Burj Khalifa was completed in Dubai at 2,716 feet, more than a half a mile high.